A Dangerous Business
by The Fool's Hope
Summary: Drabble series using an angst prompt table. Sometimes AU and involving character death. Rated T for safety; not sure where I'm going with all of these. I lose the updating game--chapters 7-12 now up. Sorry about that...
1. Murder

_A/N: These are all written for the LJ community Watson's Woes, which has succeeded in inspiring me quite a bit. Sorry, Watson :-P  
WARNING: if you don't like character death, do not read. AU. _

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**Murder**

_It was his job, of course. He really hadn't even had that much of a choice in the matter. It was what he was good at. There was murder, and where there was murder there were the murderers. And where there were murderers there was him, too. _

He feels like it should be raining. Like there should be clouds in the sky. The sun has no right to shine; the birds have no right to sing. Nothing has a right to be beautiful or happy.

_Murder was his job. Not committing the murders, but solving them. Many evil men had been brought to justice, thanks to him. All because solving murders was what he was good at. It was his job. _

Black is a fitting colour. It seems to consume all colours around it, leaving only empty darkness.

_But perhaps, if murders had not been his job, the consequences would not have been so great. If solving murders had not been his job, he would not have had his life destroyed by a murder, committed by murderers who do not want murders solved._

The coffin is lowered slowly into the ground, the sun shining off the polished surface. It is far too bright, far too hopeful a sight. It should all be dark, like his feelings. Like his life.

_He had brought many evil men to justice. But the cost was too high. If he could have traded his life of murders for a life of something, anything else, no matter how ill it suited him, he would have. But it was too late, too late._

It should be dark. It should be raining.

_If his life had not been murders, perhaps it would not have been destroyed by one. _


	2. Nightmare

**Nightmare**

Foam, and mist, and rushing water. The noise swallowed his frantic shouting, so small against the answer the falls roared back.

Again and again, a tall, thin figure tumbled from the edge, terror clearly outlined on his face.

He tried to run to the falling figure, to save him, but his legs would not move. His feet were too heavy. The mist became too thick to move through. He was trapped in a solid wall of grey, but he could still see the thin figure, falling again and again from the edge into the pounding water.

All he could do was watch, and shout the man's name.

Watson sat straight up in bed, the same name on his lips, before the walls of his bedroom slowly faded into view a moment later. His wife turned in her sleep next to him, resting peacefully. She was inches from him, but she did not hear the tremendous roar that he had heard, and could still hear. The sound of the water, the sight of the man falling…

But now he had already fallen. Worse than a nightmare is waking up to find that it is truth.


	3. Grief

**Grief**

There comes a point when there is nothing more to say.

Watson trudged up the path, not feeling his own footsteps. He had not felt anything since the death of his wife. Nothing seemed worth feeling anymore.

Almost without his will, his footsteps guided him to that narrow ledge, the path that led to the tremendous falls. The fearsome roar rang in his ears, just as it did in his nightmares.

He stood at the edge and looked down, waiting.

Watson did not fully understand what he was doing there himself, not consciously. His heart understood, though, in a deep, true way that the mind could not. Here was where his dearest friend in the world had been taken from him. But now his wife had been taken as well, and since the world had swallowed her too it seemed only fair that it should give something back.

But there was no one. There was only the falls, screaming in its endless chant, forever heralding death to Watson's ears.

He stood on the very edge and wondered if the world was not supposed to give something back, but draw him in as well. Perhaps by tossing his two anchors into the great unknown, he was meant to follow.

Watson stood, unmoving, on the edge of the cliff, as the falls cried the tears his eyes could no longer find.


	4. Late Nights

**Late Nights**

London's greatest detective sat alone in the middle of his sitting room, which seemed larger and emptier than he'd ever noticed before.

And it was wrong.

It all looked normal. There was the pipe on the mantle, the Persian slipper. There were the familiar armchairs, there was the great patriotic VR on the wall. But there was not the same warmth to the room, the same friendliness.

The same life.

Holmes sat in his customary chair and stared at the empty one across from him, a feeling of overwhelming emptiness filling the space. He kept a constant stream of thought running through his mind, because even now, months later, in moments of silence he could still hear the shot ring out. When he closed his eyes, he could see the sudden splash of red across the white wall.

But no matter what else he put in his head, he could not shake the emptiness.

Because this was not another one of the Doctor's late nights. Watson was gone.


	5. Breathe

_A/N: I'm actually a very happy person, guys. Seriously. I'm incredibly bubbly; as in I blow bubbles randomly. Seriously. No, __seriously._ I mean I _actually_ carry bubbles around with me at all times. No, I'm _serious._ Anyway, the point is, I'm just feeling quite inspired by these prompts. Which is weird, because I'm not an angsty person at all. Opposites attract, maybe.

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**Breathe**

The criminal was dead, a bullet through his heart in a defensive shot. He was already beginning to fade in Holmes' mind, as was the rest of the world. Except for the wounded form of his friend, his Watson, so very still where he lay.

The detective searched frantically for a pulse, but with the chill in the air the wrist he held felt too lifeless, and the shaking of his hands, the pounding of his own heart made it impossible for him to find what he was searching for.

He wasn't moving; Watson was not moving. The blow he'd taken would have felled an ox, and his weight had come down on his bad leg, and he was not moving, and the detective, for all his great skills, in his panic could not find a pulse.

In a last desperate attempt he dropped the wrist and reached into his pocket. Pulling out his magnifying glass, he held it close to the doctor's lips, waiting desperately for the telltale fog.


	6. Shoot

_A/N: Holmes' POV at the climactic scene of 3GAR

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**Shoot**

He was fine; Holmes could see that now. The bullet had only grazed the leg. Watson himself had hurried to reassure him. "It's nothing, Holmes," he'd said, and Holmes could see that it was, after all, a mere scratch.

But it was not nothing. In that moment, when the shots had rang out, when he'd seen Watson fall out of the corner of his eye, when he'd heard his friend's gasp of pain… it was everything.

Now he stood with his gun trained on Killer Evans, helping Watson to his feet. Though he tried to hide it, the doctor could not suppress a grimace of pain. The sight of it bit into Holmes' chest. It could have been more. It could have been so much more.

The man his gun was pointed at could have done worse than a scratch. He could have, and would have, and would have thought nothing of it if he had.

Holmes' gun was trained on Killer Evans. He wondered, for a split second, if it would be so terribly bad to pull the trigger.


	7. Fire

_A/N: (sung to the tune of "Three Blind Mice") Fail fail fail... I am made of fail... Lots and lots of fail... I am made of fail..._

_Which is why I am now putting up five chapters at once. Enjoy!

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The doctor lay resting on the sofa, a thin blanket draped over him. His wounded leg was stiffly extended, Holmes could not help but notice, and he winced with every movement.

The detective sat staring into the fireplace, as though looking for some sort of meaning in the flames. They told him nothing, however; simply continued their meaningless dance through the burning log.

He could not predict which cases would be dangerous, which cases could and would result in violence. Watson had been well aware of the danger when he had agreed to accompany him, of course, but how could he, Holmes, have allowed him to insist? He should not have to be in danger—the man was in the war, he'd done his share and so much more of duty and bravery. He should never have to be in harm's way again.

But Holmes hadn't thought enough, hadn't weighed the possible consequences, and Watson had almost died. And it was all his fault.

"Don't you go beating yourself up, Holmes."

The detective turned around, startled, to find Watson staring at him. The doctor did not have the piercing eyes of the Holmes family, but his gaze could be remarkably penetrating at times. Holmes' eyes could see through deception to find the truth, but Watson could see straight to a man's heart, an even rarer skill.

"You know I know the risks of every case you take," the doctor continued, keeping a stern gaze on his friend. "If you'd insisted on leaving me behind I would have been forced to follow you in secret, and that's really more trouble than it's worth. So I'd say you made a very wise decision in letting me come along, considering the problems it would have caused had you tried to keep me away. Don't start blaming yourself for my own stubbornness.

Holmes smiled back at his friend. "My dear Watson, it seems you have gleaned the talent of reading minds yourself."

Watson returned the smile. "I learned from the best."

The fire had not changed noticeably in appearance when it fell under Holmes' gaze once again, but to the detective the flames held warmth, a joyful spark which he had missed before.


	8. Missing

Missing:

It's a feeling that hits you suddenly, without warning, because the cause always comes without warning.

It's like taking a blow from a club to the stomach.

It's like a boulder has been dropped towards you from a great height, and it somehow fell into your mouth and lodged in your throat.

It's like the world is really a giant snowglobe, and someone has just picked it up and shaken it.

The feeling hits you all at once—you cannot make a sound, you cannot move, not even to sink to your knees. The entire world just stops.

It's the exact feeling that Sherlock Holmes experienced when the doctor's hat was brought to him, covered in blood, and he was told that John Watson was nowhere to be found.


	9. Darkness

_A/N: This is a continuation of the last one  


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Talks with the police lead to nothing, of course, as anything they could come up with he already had. Lestrade had sat him down, forced a cup of tea into his hands, and told him to calm down. The tea had, by the end of the conversation, ended up in various locations about the room, and Holmes had run out after a sudden realization.

Several hours later he returned, covered in dirt and what looked like blood. Despite being full of energy, he was noticeably out of breath. "I have a lead," was all he gasped out, before grabbing Lestrade by the sleeves and rushing him into the waiting cab.

They found the man called Simmons whom Holmes had been lead to, they interrogated him, they used his information and all that Holmes could glean from the previous evidence, and in all this time the great detective never stopped thinking, even if it was about frivolous things such as the pattern on the wallpaper or the way one of Lestrade's boots was untied. Because if he stopped thinking, he would start to feel the chill of the knowledge that the criminals may not be patient enough to keep their prize alive. Though the room was well lit, it seemed that with every passing hour the brightness was slowly seeping through the cracks in the world, leaving empty darkness in its wake.


	10. Light

_A/N: Finishes the storyline of the previous two

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Watson had been sitting in the cellar for who knew how long, with his hands chained to the wall and his face nicely bruised due to his third and last escape attempt. Exhausted, he had given up keeping his eyes open since he couldn't see anything in the blasted darkness in any case. But he could not fall asleep, his predicament kept him constantly alert and on edge.

Another sound upstairs—Every time he heard them moving about he imagined that one was going to come down and add to his injuries, or worse, go so far that his injuries would no longer matter. They had already been unfortunately rough with him; his eye was swollen and he had some lovely bruises all along his left side. Perhaps, in hindsight, there would not be so many if he had not tried to fight back so many times, but he found it preferable to simply going along with the people kidnapping him.

His musing was interrupted by another sound upstairs, a loud crash, accompanied by a good deal of shouting. Several more things crashed into each other, there was what sounded like a woman's scream, and the cellar door was flung open, flooding the little room with light.

Watson smiled with relief and squinted into the brightness as an unmistakable silhouette descended the stairs three at a time to set him free.


	11. Choke

Without even thinking, without daring to think, Watson headed back into town, treading heavily along the path. The Swiss police were waiting for him--they asked him their questions and he answered as best he could, though his voice sounded hollow to even his ears. There was only one conclusion they could possibly come to, however, and they came to it, and bid him good day.

Watson ascended the stairs to his room at the inn without being aware of his own footsteps. Methodically, almost unconsciously, he undressed and lay down in his bed, facing the wall. And he suddenly found himself left alone with his thoughts, and he did not know what he could possibly begin to think about.

There was no information left. There was only blank unfeeling, his mind, his whole body still numb.

And then a gust of wind rushed into the room through the window, which had been left ajar, rattling a piece of paper on the nightstand. Involuntarily, Watson twisted his head and saw, set neatly on top of the paper, a set of cuff links.

They belonged to Holmes.

And with the realization that these familiar objects would never be used again, Watson found himself feeling again. He reached out and grabbed them, holding them tightly in his hand as he choked back tears for the first time since finding a farewell letter at the falls.


	12. Helpless

How does it happen? One moment you are in control of a situation, the next moment something changes, and you are left standing bewildered as the world explodes around you. And you don't know what to do.

In this case, the explosion of the world took place within the pistol of a right hand man of Morgan's (the murderer of Miss Amanda Fitzgerald), who had returned to their hiding place unbeknownst to Holmes, who had managed to corner Morgan himself. The criminal's name was Boris Tate, but Holmes would not discover this until several days later, when he was willing to leave the wounded Watson's bedside to track down the shooter.

Watson was perfectly all right, in the end, though he'd been directly in the path of one of the bullets Tate managed to fire off from behind the duo, facilitating Morgan's near escape. But the shot had caught him in his already wounded shoulder, and though it managed to miss all the major arteries, he lost quite a lot of blood in very little time. He told Holmes afterwards that it had been quite a good thing that he'd passed out so quickly, all things considered, as remaining awake would have been much more painful and would have done neither of them any real good. But to Holmes, in that moment when his Watson was thrown backwards by the force of the bullet, it was like losing the only connection to reality he had. (He'd dropped to his knees next to his Boswell, shouting his name, not even caring that Morgan had fled, and his breath caught in his throat when he saw the pool of blood, there was so very much). And he couldn't find the connection again, for sheer desperation was not enough.

In that very moment, the great detective learned what true helplessness felt like.


	13. Negotiate

Holmes had often suspected that were he put in a position in which men of evil nature planned to force him into certain actions, he would choose death over cooperation. (Many people, especially Inspector Lestrade, believed that this was his philosophy no matter _who_ he was dealing with). Nothing was worth aiding criminals for.

"But what if someone was being held for ransom?" his brother had once asked. Holmes hadn't given it a thought at the time; he would simply rescue the prisoner. He knew that the task would not be beyond his powers.

And now he was no longer sure. Watson's kidnappers had sent a ransom demand, not for money, but for safety. If he dropped the Morgenstern case, they would set the doctor free.

Holmes knew that he could track them down; his rational mind recognized that he would eventually uncover them. But he did not know how long it would take, and what if he was too late?

The kidnappers in question did not realize it, but they had achieved something many people had struggled for years to accomplish—they made Sherlock Holmes contemplate cooperation.


End file.
